On a recent episode of Twisted Sister guitarist John “Jay Jay” French’s The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond The Music podcast, Jay Jay sat down with legendary singer/bassist Glenn Hughes (of Deep Purple, Black Country Communion, and Trapeze) for a 44-minute conversation that stayed focused on real-world artist problems: longevity, writing in public, and what the streaming era does to the album format.
They also spent time on Hughes’ current output, including the new singles “Voice In My Head” and “Chosen,” and the album Chosen (released September 5, 2025, via Frontiers Music Srl). And when Jay Jay brought up the studio-album cycle, Hughes got blunt about where his head is at right now.
“Well, you can see I’m kind of smiling and kind of sad because this probably will be my last solo album. Because, as you know, yourself being in the industry, nobody really buys ’em anymore. I don’t like streaming. People buy an album, listen to one or two songs, and it’s done. It’s painful sometimes for me to write these albums. I mean, these songs are very personal to me, these lyrics are very personal. I don’t think I can continue to do that anymore. I think the live work is way more important for me,” Hughes explained (via Blabbermouth).
“We don’t live in a long-player world anymore, do we, Jay Jay?” Glenn continued. “We don’t live there anymore. Maybe you can release a single here and there, maybe a live thing coming out. Albums don’t really mean anything unless you have a huge fanbase.”
The idea of live music carrying more weight than the “long-player” album also connects to how Hughes approaches setlists in 2025. He talked about how long he’s leaned into legacy material, and why he’s shifting away from running the same classics on repeat.
“The way I feel about it, Jay Jay, is, look, I’ve been playing the legacy songs for a couple of years now. I don’t know if you know — I’ve been doing this Deep Purple classic show, and I’ve come to the point, well, I’ve done that now, and I’ve done it years ago. I’m gonna go back to being simply Glenn with all those other great songs. I’ve done 18 solo albums. They’ve done really well. I’ve got [material from] Trapeze, I’ve got Hughes/Thrall, I’ve got other things to play. I’m getting into a new era when I wanna play new songs. I look different, I feel different. I’m happy. I can’t keep regurgitating these old catalog [songs]. I love them — don’t get me wrong — people wanna hear them, but my audience now is ready for something new. They’re ready for something more dangerous and more exciting, and I am the man to do that.”
For longtime fans, the message is clear: the classics still matter, but Hughes wants the next chapter to move forward with new songs, deeper cuts, and fewer “greatest hits” expectations.
And for a bit of timeline context, Hughes recorded the follow-up to 2016’s Resonate in June 2024 in Copenhagen, Denmark; work that ultimately fed into the current Chosen era.
